Portfolios > Rest and be Thankful

During the Iranian Revolution (1978-79), the Canadian Ambassador in Tehran hid some of the would-be US Embassy staff preventing them from being taken hostage. In gratitude, the Greyhound Bus Corporation issued the Thank You Canada Pass - 30 days of unlimited travel in the US for $99. I was on vacation after spending the Winter in the bush in Northern Canada, so I purchased the Pass. It was May 1980. I accumulated approximately 14,000 miles. My routine was sleeping on the bus for two or three nights in a row and then in a hotel for a night. I visited Denver and Boulder for the first time on that trip. Little did I know that I’d be moving to Denver the following year. Towards the end of the big bus trip, I was at the New Orleans bus station about to board a bus to Miami. However, because I had a health issue (STD from a one-night stand in San Francisco), at the very last minute, I changed my mind about going to Miami and boarded a bus for New York instead. The next morning, a ship hit the Tampa Bay Bridge. A section of the bridge collapsed. The Greyhound Bus I would have been on plunged into Tampa Bay killing all 36 passengers on board.